Local News

Trainings vital to police department

Kerr shares department's training requirements

Sterling Police Chief Tyson Kerr talks to the Rotary Club about the importance of training for his officers. (Callie Jones / Sterling Journal-Advocate)

In any job ongoing training is important to keep your skills up to date; police work is no different. Sterling Police Chief Tyson Kerr spoke to the Rotary Club Wednesday about the training his officers go through.

"The training piece of the police department, as with many organizations, is extremely critical, especially for building trust and building partnerships and to add credibility and legitimacy to our organization," Kerr said.

He explained training helps officers be prepared, it helps shape the culture of the department, enhances morale and increases job satisfaction, thus helping with retention. SPD wants their officers to know that its standards and trainings are equal or exceed those of other departments.

"Beyond that, it's just absolutely necessary, training is extremely necessary in what we do," Kerr commented, noting SPD has put a great emphasis on training, especially in the last three to five years.

Some people may think training isn't as important in an agency SPD's size, but Kerr doesn't agree with that. He pointed out Sterling is the 23rd largest law enforcement agency in the state and while 80 percent of agencies across the country have less than 10 people, SPD has over 20, making it a mid-sized agency.

"The point is our people in our community are just as important as anywhere else," he said. "We deal with the same issues as anywhere else and we're expected to provide service at a very high level."

Advertisement

SPD officers are certified through the POST (Police Officers Standards and Trainings) board. Kerr explained POST has a new rule requiring officers to have a minimum of 24 hours annual in-service training each year. Of those 24 hours, 12 must be in perishable skills training: firearms, driving, arrest control or defensive tactics, and so on.

Sterling has exceeded those requirements. In 2015, SPD averaged over 100 hours of training per officer. In total the department had over 6,000 hours of training "and we continue that vision and philosophy for 2016 and beyond," Kerr said.

He noted police officers have about 3,000 different tasks that they perform, "so keeping track of those things is another reason why training is extremely important."

When SPD hires an officer, they've already been POST certified, but the department also does its own 18-week training.

"It's a pretty intense training, going through what we do, our policies, our procedures, all the different things that are associated with that," Kerr said. The training can be extended if someone isn't quite where the department wants them to be towards the end of it and sometimes people don't make it through.

SPD also has continuing education through in-house and online trainings. Plus they host trainings; do hands-on and scenario based trainings; and sometimes officers are sent to the Denver Metro area for trainings.

The trainings they do are on a variety of topics, including: how to detect if someone is under the influence of alcohol or drugs; marijuana laws and enforcement; firearms; active violence/active shooter; canine searches; legal liabilities in schools; traffic accidents; arson; child sex assault; criminal investigation; ballistics; community policing; and many more.

Recently all officers completed a half-day of training for the new body cameras the department has implemented.

They also do preparation and training to handle natural disasters such as tornadoes and floods, and have specialized trainings for the department's tactical team, swat team, meth lab team and other units.

Kerr spoke specifically about CIT training for dealing with people who are in altered state of mind due to alcohol, drugs, mental illness, etc.

"Interacting in those situations are very complex and very challenging and we deal with those situations on a daily basis," he said. "Those situations, sometimes they go well, sometimes they don't go as well as we would like."

Kerr shared that when he became chief one of his priorities was to find a training program that the department could get all of its front line officers involved in for those types of situations.

"There's not much out there. The best thing out there is a 40-hour class, it's called the Memphis Model, but to get an entire staff a week away for training, with turnover and all that, it's just not practical," he said.

So he asked a commander within SPD, who is very well-versed in this area, to come up with a program and they created ACE (Agitated Chaotic Event) training. Kerr said the one-day training meets the department's needs "in dealing with those with Alzheimer's, dealing with autism, dealing with some of these other things that are just extremely challenging."

He pointed out many times officers are thrust into these situations and "we're it. We don't have 911 to call — we are 911 — so we have to find a resolution. We have to be able to deal with it."

It's been a year and a half since the program was created. All of SPD's officers have been trained in it and the department is trying to get it to be a POST certified program, so officers across the state can have access to it.

Kerr also talked about who pays for the trainings the department takes part in. They can be paid for through grants that SPD gets from POST; the grants are used to either provide scholarships or to host trainings. If officers want to attend a training that's being held somewhere else, the department puts in for it and is reimbursed for meals, lodging and the conference.

"We have a lot of training funds that we are using, especially now, to try to save our local tax dollars and use them as best that we can," Kerr said, noting the department also has its own training budget that they use. "With all that we really do have a great opportunity to maintain our training program and our philosophy of training."

Article Comments

We reserve the right to remove any comment that violates our ground rules, is spammy, NSFW, defamatory, rude, reckless to the community, etc.

We expect everyone to be respectful of other commenters. It's fine to have differences of opinion, but there's no need to act like a jerk.

Use your own words (don't copy and paste from elsewhere), be honest and don't pretend to be someone (or something) you're not.

Our commenting section is self-policing, so if you see a comment that violates our ground rules, flag it (mouse over to the far right of the commenter's name until you see the flag symbol and click that), then we'll review it.